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Deeplinks Blog

San Francisco, CA - Last week, House Republicans circulated draft legislation that contains provisions from the never-introduced "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," otherwise known as "PATRIOT II." The draft legislation is meant to implement intelligence reforms recommended by the 9/11 Commission Final Report. But its reach goes far...

Along with more than two dozen eager international election observers, I recently had the pleasure of observing a live demonstration of one of the controversial electronic voting machines that are in place to record and tabulate millions of American votes on election day. Results, as they say, were mixed. Approximately...

It looks like death was just the beginning for the never-introduced "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," otherwise known as "PATRIOT II." As the Associated Press, LA Times, and Washington Post reported last week, lawmakers are circulating draft legislation that breathes new life into some...

Washington, DC - The federal government on Tuesday announced plans to order all airlines to turn over the personal records of every air passenger who traveled domestically in June 2004, for use in testing the Transportation Security Administration's latest passenger-profiling scheme, "Secure Flight." The TSA's previous plans for a profiling...

San Francisco, CA - Today the Electronic Frontier Foundation released the results of research conducted jointly with the Verified Voting Foundation and American Families United into the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular models of e-voting machines. Organized into one-page quick reference guides, this research gives users...

Consumer and Public Interest Groups Seek to Narrow and Invalidate Ambiguous Patents that Harm Society Washington, DC - Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and two public interest organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge, filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the US Court of...

Today, EFF joined a broad coalition of public interest and industry groups in sending a strong message to Congress regarding the highly controversial Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (S. 2560): Slow down. The Induce Act proposes a dramatic change to current copyright law. For the first time in...

Washington, DC - In a blow to the privacy of air travelers, the Department of Transportation has dismissed a complaint against Northwest Airlines. The complaint alleged that Northwest airlines, by giving three months' worth of passenger data to NASA for research into passenger profiling without the knowledge or consent...

San Francisco, CA - The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected the government's attempt to bar the press and the public from a trial where plaintiff John Gilmore is challenging the constitutionality of requiring airline passengers to show ID. Last week, the government tried to sidetrack Gilmore's...

The Senate Judiciary Committee, responding to the hail of brickbats that greeted Senator Hatch's "Induce Act," asked the Copyright Office to propose something that would be more popular with the technology community. Here's the heart of what it came up with: Whoever manufactures, offers to the public, provides, or otherwise...

Law "Blacked Out" More than a Million Legitimate Websites The Federal District Court in Philadelphia ruled today that a state law requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block access to websites that allegedly host child pornography violates the First Amendment. In order to comply with the law, ISPs had...

The Washington Post reports that the House Judiciary Committee has marked up and reported H.R. 4077, the Piracy Deterrence and Education Act (PDEA). The measure is now ready for a vote by the entire House of Representatives. The Senate has taken no action on any companion bill. The PDEA...

As we reported last week, Microsoft's new music download store, MSN Music, advised its frustrated iPod-toting customers to simply burn their purchases to CD, then rip them to an open format like MP3. That way, they could play their MSN Music downloads on their iPod (or any other device...